Merkel allies wary as coalition partner seeks concessions

• Chancellor Angela Merkel's party on Sunday reacted coolly to concessions sought by the new, leftist leaders of the Social Democrats in return for keeping their fragile coalition afloat.

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel's party on Sunday reacted coolly to concessions sought by the new, leftist leaders of the Social Democrats in return for keeping their fragile coalition afloat.

"It's bad for Germany when every important decision depends on how the SPD is feeling at that moment," Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, leader of Merkel's CDU conservatives, told the Bild am Sonntag daily.

At a crunch party congress this weekend, the ailing SPD voted against an immediate exit from the government.

But new leadership duo Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken won the party's backing to steer a more leftwing course.

The party backed them to open "discussions" with Merkel's CDU/CSU bloc on demands including a higher minimum wage, more public investment and more climate action.

No timeframe has been given but talks could start as early as this week, according to German media.

If no progress is made, the SPD could call it quits -- potentially upending Merkel's plan to complete her fourth term before retiring from politics in 2021.

Kramp-Karrenbauer, seen as Merkel's preferred successor, said she had hoped for a "clearer commitment" from the SPD to continue governing.

She slammed the party for trying to tweak the hard-fought coalition agreement clinched after 2017's inconclusive general elections, pointing out that leadership changes at the CDU and CSU never put the left-right coalition at stake.

"The CDU is loyal to the agreement and I expect the same from the new SPD leadership," she told Bild.

"I can't accept conditions along the lines of 'If we don't get this, we walk'."

The secretary general of the CSU, Markus Blume, was equally scathing.

"An SPD on a leftist course won't lead to a government on a leftist course," he tweeted.